Increase Laptop Battery Life: 7 Things that can be Switched Off

Although modern laptop battery provide enough backup that can last for the day but as the battery goes older, the its backup get reduced. And for laptops which doesn’t have a replaceable battery, it is a serious matter of concern. There are several ways by which you can improve the battery backup of laptop or notebook. You can find them here: 7 Tips to Increase Laptop Battery Backup [Rocket Push].

Among these 7 tips, this article is specifically focused on things that can be switched off to squeeze most out of your laptop battery. This article also discuss the How’s of switching off these things, in details. So, let’s know about the things which you can switch off in your laptop or notebook:

7 Things to Switch off to increase Laptop Battery Life

1. DVD drive

DVD drive is the first prominent thing in the laptop that can be switched off to increase laptop battery life (backup). In the era of USB drives, the use of DVDs and CDs is a reduced significantly or you can say to zero. Even, you can install operating system with the help of USB drive. And this is much faster than use of the DVD drive. If you do not use DVD drive frequently, then you can permanently unplug the DVD drive connector from the laptop motherboard. Disconnecting DVD drive reduce the load on battery considerably.

If you are planning to purchase a new laptop then it is advisable to buy a laptop without a DVD drive. For specific purpose, you can use external USB DVD drive. This reduce the weight of your laptop too.

You can also use the the removed DVD drive as an external USB DVD drive by using a simple connector.

2. Laptop Speakers

The next thing you can switch off in your laptop is the speakers to increase laptop battery life. Most of the time, when you’re working, speakers consume power while there is no significant need of that. And so you can switch them off. Switching of speakers will improve the battery backup of your laptop.

You can switch off the speaker of your laptop in the following ways:

Use the FN key along with the key that has a picture of a speaker.

Mute the speakers in the Sounds settings on the computer:

Find the speaker icon in the notification area and right-click on the icon with your mouse. Select Open Volume Control or Open Volume Mixer from the menu that appears.

In the Volume Control window, click the Mute all check box on the bottom left to mute all speaker sound. In Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10, click the bottom left speaker icon to mute the speakers.

3. In Windows 10, right-click the Speaker icon in the Windows Notification Area and select Playback devices. In the Sound window, right-click the Speakers/Headphones entry and select the Disable option.

For Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8, right-click the Speaker icon in the system tray and choose the Disable option.

3. Portable hard disks and other USB accessories

Portable hard disk and other USB accessories like pen drive can be switched off when not required. External hard disk completely rely on laptop battery for power. Except when there is no data transfer, you can just unplug the hard disk. Similar is the case with other USB accessories. Both of these option can increase the battery backup.

4. Webcams

Webcams also consume significant portion of battery power in your laptop. You can switch off webcam to increase laptop battery life. To switch off web cam of your laptop: Right click on my computer > Manage > Device Manager > Imaging Devices. Right click on your webcam and select Disable.

5. Wi-Fi & Bluetooth

A switch on Wi-Fi consume power when it is not connected to any network. It do so to find any Wi-Fi network. Bluetooth also consume power in the similar manner. Both of these can be switched off to save battery power.

6. External Graphic Card

Every laptop motherboard have an on-board graphic card called integrated graphic card. If you are not working with computer programs (Video games, video editing ) which require graphic processing power, you can completely rely on integrated graphic card. You can disable external graphic card. This reduces the load on battery of the laptop.

7. Processor (CPU) cores

To increase laptop battery backup or life, in Windows operating system, you can disable some cores of a multi-core processor (CPU) when there is need of lower computing power. This will considerably reduce the load on laptop battery. To know how to disable processor core, please watch following video: